Chapter 13
“Rarity! Are you… Uh, I would assume that means you’re not.” Twilight lets out a sigh, before turning to the next pony on her list- Pinkie Pie… who is still in bed, sound asleep.
She lets out a groan and turns back, heading for the third room- the one with Applejack and the pegasi. When she gets there, though, she finds she’s not the first.
As the door opens, Princess Midnight looks up from where Applejack is ‘standing’ on the floor. She has to turn her head to look- but unless she misses her guess, it’s Twilight. She’s fairly certain she’s right, too; Twilight’s ship had very politely informed her- when she asked, of course- that Princess Twilight is the only pony not berthed in this room, other than herself, to be up and about. And that she can’t do anything for either of the two injured outside of this room- by informing her of the nature of the injuries. A minor concussion on Rarity’s part and a simple case of being knocked out for both of them.
While she doesn’t know of any cure for either of the above, she has had medical training- and the ship had, again very politely, confirmed that pony shoulders are comparable to the shoulders she used to have. So, she’d come straight here- and offered to help. Rainbow, the one-winged pegasus, had immediately jumped up to the ceiling to help Applejack down to the floor, where the… She’s not sure what they call the ponies with no wings.
Yes, it is Twilight. She bows her head. “Princess.”
Twilight stops in the doorway, walking in some kind of stunted manner, as if she was wearing magnetic boots. She blinks. “Uh, good morning, Princess Midnight. Um…” She looks at Applejack, who is shifting to grip the bedpost in her effort to avoid floating around the room. “Everypony okay?”
Applejack nods, swiftly hooking a hind leg under the bed so she could raise her foreleg for duty. “Yep. Turns out Princess Midnight knows how to take care of a dislocated shoulder.”
Rainbow glances up at Applejack. “But she can’t help a sprain, can she?”
She sighs, looking towards the pegasus. “I told you already, it’s just a sprain. Sure, it’ll hurt a lot, but as long as you let it rest, it’ll heal on its own.”
“Oh puh-lease, Doctor Horse could-”
She interrupts. “I’d bet he knew a healing spell,” she states.
Rainbow blinks. “You don’t?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Do I look like a doctor?”
Twilight’s turn. “Wait. You never learned the basic healing spell in Magic Kintergarten…?”
She shakes her head, taking the time to analyze the statement. “I didn’t grow up on your world,” she states. “My medical training is nonmagical in nature because magic isn’t taught on my world. A sprain is a sprain- you let it rest, it will heal. An anti-inflammatory can help, and perhaps a painkiller if it hurts too much- but we don’t have any drugs left, do we?” She glances up at the ceiling for the last couple words.
“All medications have been lost to Critical Overheat temperatures.”
She gives a sharp nod, turning back towards Rainbow. “So unless you happen to know a good healing spell, I can’t help with that.”
Rainbow blinks, then hangs her head.
“Oh, that’s- Arrgh!” Twilight breaks off mid-sentence with a pained yelp, multicolored sparks flying off of her horn.
She looks at the Princess. “Something wrong?”
Twilight shudders, recovering from something. “No… Just rediscovering what it feels like to have a broken horn.” She lets out a shaky sigh. “I know plenty of healing spells… but I can’t exactly demonstrate them…”
She sighs. “Perhaps Rarity might know one?” Scowl. “Though she has a concussion, and it’s not a good idea to play around with those.”
Twilight shudders. “Especially with magic. Concussions make it exponentially easier to lose control- so much that there’s only ever been one instance of a successful cast by a pony with a concussion.”
She raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.
Rainbow speaks up. “Maybe Luna could help?”
Midnight shakes her head. “No, that’d be worse. Athena?”
“During the secondary impact with her bed, Princess Luna sustained a severe concussion, a cracked skull, and three sprained ligaments in her neck. She is expected to remain comatose for a minimum of eighteen hours.”
She nods. “And Rarity?”
“Rarity has sustained a minor concussion and been knocked cold. She is expected to awaken within ten minutes, but her concussion may last for up to three hours.”
Applejack looks at Rainbow. “Besides, I don’t think Luna knows any minor healing spells.”
Rainbow blinks. “Wha- What about major healing spells?”
Twilight answers first. “There is no known spell capable of restoring a lost limb,” she states- and eyeballs her horn. “Or a damaged horn… if there was, I would have fixed Tempest’s. As it is, I owe her an apology.” She shakes her head. “I was too dismissive of her pain.”
The ship cuts in suddenly. “Incoming transmission has requested direct communication with the captain of this vessel.”
“What?”
He lets out a sigh, trotting to his controller board. The night crew must have practiced absenteeism once again; he’s the second pony in the room, and also the second pony to enter it in the last thirty seconds. He glances at the other one, an Emergency Technician, provided on-staff because most spacecraft calling into the control station haven’t a clue how to keep their ships from blowing up- or cooking them alive. Her expertise has saved countless crews in the past.
“How’s it going?” He asks, as he trots towards his control panel. He’s one of the two controllers on this shift- and the other one called in late.
She sighs. “Well, no emergency signals broadcasted last night, and that’s probably a good thing, but we’re probably gonna wanna check any new craft anyways.” She sends him a grin. “You know how they are.”
“Lot of ‘em don’t know what an emergency even is, do they?” He shakes his head. “I still don’t know why they won’t let us issue and require licenses to fly spacecraft.”
She shakes her head as well. “Me neither. Anyways, you’re probably about to broadcast an IFF query- lemme know how it goes.”
“Uh, that’s an affirmative. It’s a royal pain, but it has to happen when nopony actually stays their shift to make sure no ships fly in unaccounted for.” He glowers briefly at the door before trotting up to his panel, taking his seat, and deploying his Hoof-Attached Natural Digit Systems. One on each foreleg, with five little metal fingers on each. He punches a few keys on the panel, broadcasting the named query- and instantly, the panel chimes the tone of an inbound IFF signal.
“That was fast,” she comments. “We seeing ourselves again?”
He reads his panel for a second. “Nope… it’s not familiar, either. Um… Not in the database, to boot. Wherever it came from, we’ve never seen that ship before.” The panel chimes again with the next IFF, but it takes him hardly a glance to associate the tag with a ship he’d logged as in orbit last night.
He focuses on the first one, the strange IFF, and reads the metadata- or at least, as much as his computers can understand of it. For some reason, there are entire segments of the IFF data that simply don’t make sense.
It’s… confusing, at best. He lets out a sigh, before slipping on his radio headset. She plugs her headset into his terminal as well, swiftly switching off her microphone feed before he punches in the general contact frequency and pushes the transmit key.
“Alright, uh, Alpha-Tango-Hotel-Echo-November-Alpha, this is Orbital Control, do you copy, over?”
The response is instant; their comms officer must be either bored or really on his game. “Starship Athena to Orbital Control, Copy that, Over.” Strike that- really on her game. Definitely female.
“Ahh, yes. I have you on radar, but I have no record of your arrival, over?”
“Affirmative. Confirmed negative Orbital Control response at time of arrival; requesting clearance for current orbital position zero-seven-bravo-three-one-charlie-four, over.”
“Uh, I don’t think we have an orbital position like that, over?”
“Requesting clearance for current orbital position- two-eight-three-niner miles above sea level, eastern equatorial on thirty degrees north by forty-seven east, offset eighteen point three minutes, over.”
“Uh…” He touches through his computers, finds the named orbit, and assigns it. “Yep, got that one. Clearance granted for orbital position described. Um, are there any undesirable circumstances aboard, over?”
“This vessel is currently operating under Critical Overheat Lockdown, over.”
Both he and his shift tech blink once before he strikes the key again. “Right then. May I speak with the chief engineer or the Captain, over?”
“Contacting the Captain, please hold.”
Now the two share odd looks. “That’s… interesting,” he states. “Almost like it’s not a real pony talking.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “I can only hope the Captain knows what she’s talking about,” she states.
He nods. “You and me both. You and me both.”
Then the radio transmission returns- a different voice. Could be a different ship, as well. “This is, uh, Twilight Sparkle, um, captain of the Starship Athena… somepony called?”
He blinks. This Captain Sparkle isn’t nearly as professional as her communications officer- but she has, at least, self-identified which ship she’s on. “Uh, yes,” he states. “We’d like to verify everything is going well up there. Your communications officer mentioned a Critical Overheat Lockdown?”
The silence is palpable, and seems to last forever, before Captain Sparkle comes back on. “Yes. How easy is that to fix?”
He glances at the tech- and gets a shrug in response. “We’ve never heard of it before. What symptoms are you experiencing?”
Another pause, though much smaller. “The ship is too hot? Um, how easy is it to cool down?”
He and the tech together let out a sigh. “It can be easy, or it can be very hard. Your ship is equipped with radiators and they are fully exposed and active, correct?”
Pause. “Yes.”
“The total sum of all heat being produced on the ship is then smaller than that being released by the radiators, correct?”
Another pause. “Yes?”
He and his tech nod simultaneously. “Then your heat problem will solve itself, given time. Is it, by any stretch of the imagination, dangerous to remain aboard?”
Almost no pause this time. “Yes. Much hotter and I’m pretty sure we’d be cooking alive.”
“Alright. What’s your internal temperature?”
Pause. “Average two hundred thirty eight thousand degrees, apparently. It’s only a hundred and thirty where we are.”
He stares at the panel for a second, before turning to the tech. “Wouldn’t a ship melt at that temperature?”
She nods. “Possibly vaporize, as well. They must have some new alloy and an impressive heat management system.”
He nods. “Yes.” Then he pushes the radio button again. “Uh- just to confirm, all your radiators are wide open and active?”
Pause. “Except the one that broke during, uh, ‘thermonuclear cookoff’, yes.”
He practically screams into the mic. “You’ve had thermonuclear weapons cookoff!?!?”
“Yes.”
“How many more do you have on board?”
Long pause. “Almost forty thousand across ninety-nine magazines… um, they should be fine, as long as the thermal distribution grid doesn’t fail again.”
“Alright, but by the safety regs, we’re going to have to insist on either abandoning ship until it returns to safe temperatures or a full jettison of all nuclear warheads. Will you require assistance?”
Another long pause. “So, we’re allowed to descend? Not with the whole ship, but…?”
He nods. “Yes, you are allowed to return to the surface. We’ll just need to clear any flight paths first.”
Pause. “Thank you. Um, yes, we’ll need assistance… I guess all our small craft have melted.” She sounds mildly terrified.
“Right then. What’s your skin temperature?”
“Anywhere between four hundred thousand and one point two million degrees.”
“That’ll vaporize any ship that touches it,” his tech mutters.
He nods, and pushes the button. “Roger that. We won’t be able to perform any standard docking maneuvers, for safety concerns- do you have any exosuits, er, remaining aboard?”
Another long pause. “Not exactly, but we have the breathing-in-space problem solved for, uh, fifteen minutes or so of, um, ‘extra-vehicular activity’?”
He sighs. “Alright then. How many do you have aboard?”
“Eight.”
He touches up some keys. “Alright. I can have the rescue craft pull as close as six miles for an extravehicular switch- is that workable?”
“Sure, we can do that!”
“Roger that.” He releases the key again, and starts punching for the duty rescue craft. “I wonder exactly how she plans on pulling extravehicular activity without an exosuit,” he muses.
The engineer snorts. “She’ll probably forget to leave the door open, too- and have to cut the thing open.”
He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t be the first time, either. This thing is huge, though- it’s gotta cost a fortune to fly.” He shudders. “I wonder how long it’s gonna take to cool down.”
“How huge?”
He glances at the radar readout. “Uh, about ten miles long.”
“I wonder if they have their own fuel manufacturing plant onboard,” she muses. “Even if it’s a pencilship, that’s going to take an enormous amount of fuel to move.” Then she snorts. “I really hope she’s got a stable orbit, too. I’d hate to have that thing hit the atmosphere. Especially at that temperature.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.024 seconds
Total duration
769 users online
1,172,571 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Well, that's going to be interesting. I do wonder how they keep finding places with actual inhabitants, though. Space is normally rather a bit of a void...
Eh, it's probably some strange feature of the ship's navigation.
I would not try to evac people from anything with that much weaponry. Ever. They have no problem being there in the first place (even if because they are clueless), and anyone trying to remove them could suffer an "accident" ... accidental or otherwise.
Hmm. That one device sounds familiar. I don't mind, though; I have no idea when I can get back to writing that.
9306870
Yes, that device does sound familiar. I was waiting for you to notice it before I credited it
As for evac-ing them from it... they won't have any resistance, because the passengers themselves are willing to go. Even without knowing what kind of situation they're getting themselves into- I mean, 130°F is dangerously hot. Not to the point of cooking (I don't think), but still deadly if not properly handled... and possibly even then, I don't know.
As for the planet being occupied...
There's two things 'unoccupied' could mean: Uninhabited, or simply no enemies. She wasn't looking for inhabitants, or even habitable worlds- just an escape. As a result, the habitation of the planet- and its existence, even- were entirely coincidental. Never know what one might stumble upon out in the Great Expanse, after all.
9306907
130 is probably deadly. Heatstroke starts at temperatures not much higher than body temperature IF heat can't be dissipated. Given that the external temp is just that much hotter, it would probably be dangerous. Then again, magic friendship space ponies. That trumps ALL logic.
I still hold that managing to jump to TWO consecutive inhabited areas is a bit much though.
9307099
Honestly, if I made it an empty system or uninhabited planet (far more likely scenarios), we'd have a boring while to wait while the ship cooled. This way, something can happen during that time- that is, something other than just Midnight learning to fly.
Don't forget- they jumped to the first on a blind jump, then took the ONLY wormhole in the system to the other one...
As for magic friendship space ponies, they're only magic friendship ponies. They're relying on the technology to handle the space part- so, relying on the overheated ship to keep them cool.
As for how they're going to meet that rescue ship... it'll take some time for it to get up there. Presumably, Rarity will recover from her concussion in time and be able to apply a healing spell to Luna, whose (knowledge of her) Alicorn magic will be strong enough to create a pressurized "atmosphere bubble" they can launch out the airlock, with them inside...
Not spoilered because that's about how much space it'd take in a chapter; that's the assumptions that are taking place between this chapter and the next- and I've provided enough clues already for readers to come to a similar conclusion. The ground crew won't, though...
9307107
I was thinking much the same for that event, yes.
I do hope they come up with a way to fix their injuries soon, though.
9307116
I have a plan for that.
It... may take a while.
Worst space cruise ever. Between the maiming and the ship constantly over heating luck has not been on the ponies side. While I expect Twilight to figure out a regeneration spell it's going to take months and require help(Sunset, Starlight, Cadance or Celestia) and they need to get home first!
9318543
I agree- I would not want to be on that ship with them. Especially with what I have planned.
9318728
So basically they will never want to set hoof on a spaceship for the rest of their lives after this?
9319242
It depends. They're gonna have to, to get back home- and I plan on having some of the ship's strengths show themselves before they get there.